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Study Tips

Study Tips & Tools

Top Ten Tips & Shortcuts

For Success in Anatomy & Physiology

photo of person studying; text: ten study tips for A&P, get started planning your study strategy

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1. Know your learning style—a path to understanding how you learn best.  Starting with your preferred style, you can develop skills of metacognition—”thinking about how you think” to learn effectively. Do you learn best by hearing it, seeing it, feeling it, reading about it?   Then start there and investigate what works best for your own learning.

 

2. Read the textbook—the textbook has the “meat” of the matter and some useful diagrams and tables, too!

 

3. Draw a picture of each concept—if you can map it out visually, you’ve gained significant understanding of the concept.

 

4. Approach your course as if it were a foreign language course: study the new “foreign” words first, then use your new vocabulary to build an understanding of concepts

 

5. Keep a running concept list for each new concept that you learn.  Many concepts show up time and again in a course . . . often with new connections to other concepts.  If you keep a list handy for each separate concept and add to it throughout the course, you’ll learn it a lot more easily!

 

6. Form a study group!  Nothing works better than pooling your efforts and interacting with other students in your class.  Make sure you meet weekly, not only just before a test.

 

7. Use your learning outline as a skeleton for your own notes and study sessions.  Use your outline as the “skeleton” on which you hang all the “organs” of the course.

 

8. Practice for tests!  Get to know what kind of items will be on a test and make up your own items to practice with.  Develop a test-taking strategy that will improve your test scores.

 

9. Learn from your mistakes!  Go over each test and study the items that were marked wrong to find out how you can better improve your skills for the next test.

 

10. Take time to have fun.  If you study, study, study you’ll get burned out on your courses and won’t have the balanced attitude necessary for success.

Last updated: January 12, 2022 at 14:11 pm